2 New Jobs for Massachusetts Official: Acting Governor and Mother of Twins

Jane Swift, the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, first drew national attention in 1998 for campaigning while pregnant. Then, last year, she faced fire for ethical lapses that included asking aides to baby-sit for her little daughter. Now, she takes on an even greater challenge:

She is expected to take over within weeks for the current Republican governor, Paul Cellucci, who has just been picked by President Bush to be ambassador to Canada.

And she is pregnant with twins.

''Jane Swift is facing a dilemma that millions of American women are facing,'' said Elizabeth A. Sherman, director of the graduate program for Women in Politics and Government at the University of Massachusetts. ''And that is, how are we going to combine our demanding careers with having children?''

People are going to be asking, Ms. Sherman said, ''Can Jane Swift fulfill her responsibilities to the public and still be a good mother?''

Ms. Swift, 35, is due to deliver the twins in June. A Republican, she would be the first woman to govern Massachusetts, and experts say she would also be the first American governor -- albeit an acting one -- to give birth while in office. She would also be the youngest serving governor in the country.

''I'm prepared for the challenge of being governor,'' she told reporters on Tuesday. ''I don't underestimate the difficulty of the challenges. I also don't believe I've ever in my life shied away from hard work.''

She does not think, she said, that having a baby ''results in incapacitation.''

Ms. Swift did not get into many details about how she would balance babies and budgets, but she indicated that she would not take a traditional maternity leave, and would keep running the state from home, even from bed, if necessary. Mothers of twins often find their pregnancies are unusually demanding physically and are at greater risk for complications.

Ms. Swift faces the possibility of a high-risk pregnancy but will definitely face a high-risk political situation. Under Massachusetts law, the position of lieutenant governor will remain vacant, once she leaves it, until the next election. The next person in the line for the governorship during her tenure would be William Galvin, the secretary of state, a Democrat with open ambitions for the governor's job.

Mr. Galvin is making very clear that he plans no political stunts during Ms. Swift's tenure and that he expects to be called on mainly to fill in on simple administrative matters when she needs help.

''It's awkward, and I'm going to do whatever I'm asked to do,'' he said today, ''and however I can be of assistance, I will be. And it's not just because I'm doing this for her, I'm doing it for the state. It would ill-serve the state to have a chaotic relationship here.''

Still, that quirk of succession means that Ms. Swift will have no political helpmate of her own, and she can hardly help but hear the snicker-snack of knives being sharpened all around her. She is a Republican in a heavily Democratic state, and her popularity ratings sank in recent months to 17 percent, according to a December poll by The Boston Herald. In political circles, some here are saying that the 2002 campaign has just begun, and names of potential candidates have begun flying about in abundance.

Ms. Swift's position is made even more difficult by the lingering resonance of her central stumble in office. When accusations that she had been abusing the perks of office surfaced last year, she initially defended herself vehemently, even asserting that her aides baby-sat for her daughter, Elizabeth, voluntarily because the child was so charming.

Eventually, she admitted that she had made mistakes and issued many a mea culpa. She also sought a ruling from the state ethics commission. The commission found that she did in fact violate ethics rules by having aides baby-sit away from the State House and fined her $1,250, but cleared her on several other matters including the accusation that she had improperly used a state helicopter once to fly home to her sick baby in Western Massachusetts.

Her admitted mishandling of the situation apparently cost her much of the sympathy she had at first from parents performing their own child-versus-career balancing acts. And experts on women in politics say she is likely to face even harsher scrutiny.

Other governors have had multiple babies while in office, said Debbie Walsh, associate director of the center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers, but it was always the governors' spouses who were giving birth. The wife of Gov. John Engler of Michigan, Michelle, had triplets days after he was re-elected in 1994, Ms. Walsh noted.

But when the governors are men, ''We don't worry about whether they'll be able to handle it, because they have wives and the scrutiny is very different,'' Ms. Walsh said. ''Probably everyone's all sort of misty-eyed, saying 'Oh, he's going to have triplets, how nice!' But for her, it's 'Oh my God, how can she physically do this?' And that goes beyond physically carrying them to term; it's the difference between having a wife and not having one to care for them afterward and help raise them.''

In fact, Ms. Swift's husband, Charles Hunt, a contractor by trade and stay-at-home father, provides the daily care of Elizabeth and is widely expected to take care of the twins as well. But one adviser to Ms. Swift said today that the likely governor-to-be did not seem to have all the arrangements figured out yet, that at this point she was emphasizing that she would be flexible and creative.

Unlike many other states, Massachusetts does not give its governor a rent-free mansion, and Ms. Swift is expected to continue the 130-mile commute from Williamstown; in general, moving up to the governorship would give her and her husband -- neither of whom have independent means -- few additional perks, advisers say.

On the political spectrum, Ms. Swift is seen as a moderate not much different from Mr. Cellucci. She is for abortion rights and gay rights, and espouses policies tough on crime and tight on spending.

She will need that toughness now, many say. Ms. Swift says she believes she can use technology to carry on her day-to-day business ''without having to make huge concessions,'' and that she has learned a lot over the last two years of mixing motherhood with full-time work.

Today, she told reporters, ''I think there's a way to manage it,'' without getting into specifics, and emphasized her commitment to her family. ''I am the only mother my daughter had and I will be the only mother my twins have,'' she said. ''My family is the most important thing to me.''

On the streets of downtown Boston today, Patricia Galindo, 52, of Norfolk, Mass., had her doubts about how workable Ms. Swift's situation would be, in view of her experiences with her own children.

''It's going to be a tremendous emotional pull on her, to leave those kids,'' she said. ''My heart goes out to her with that. I wish her luck with the children. I wish us luck with the state.''